True biblical Christianity provides the clearest understanding, the strongest support, and the greatest assurance to get through this life and to prepare for eternity. We put ourselves at peril in this temporal earthly life and in the eternal life to come if we ignore the Bible’s Christian truths.

We hear a lot these days about professing Christian young people deconstructing their faith. The experiences of Adoniram Judson in turning away from, then coming to the Christian faith speak with relevance to those who are questioning their faith today.
Judson eventually became America’s first foreign missionary, serving for nearly forty years in Burma (modern Myanmar). However, as a young college student he rejected Christianity for a time. Here’s the dramatic true story of how God graciously led him through his unbelief to genuine faith in Christ.
Adoniram’s father was a conservative Christian minister who served a series of three Congregational churches in Massachusetts. Adoniram was an extremely intelligent boy who by age ten gained proficiency in both Greek and Latin. Barely one week after his sixteenth birthday in August 1804, Adoniram entered Rhode Island College in Providence (soon thereafter renamed Brown University).
Adoniram’s scholarship and outward conduct were highly commendable. But he had not yet been spiritually regenerated (born again) and manifested little interest in spiritual matters. In addition, he soon fell under the influence of one Jacob Eames of Belfast, Maine, an upper classman at Brown.
Eames was intelligent, talented, witty, and amiable, but a confirmed Deist. Deism was a popular, rationalistic belief system in that era. It taught that a Supreme Being had originally created the universe, but after that was totally uninvolved with the universe or humankind. Owing to similar tastes and sympathies, Adoniram and Jacob quickly became fast friends, and before long Judson joined Eames in his disbelief of Christianity.
After graduating from Brown, Adoniram taught school for eleven months in Plymouth, where his family was then living. But he wanted to see more of the world and to make much more of his life. He also felt shackled and like a hypocrite living in his parents’ home and attending their church, never having revealed to them the change of religious beliefs he had come to have while in college.
Consequently, on his twentieth birthday, he abruptly left his teaching position and announced his intention to travel for a time. When his father pressed him for an explanation of that sudden change of course, Adoniram was forced to divulge his newly held beliefs.
His father responded with accusations of irresponsibility and ingratitude as well as warnings against rushing to his own destruction. His mother responded with tears and pleading. After enduring a week of domestic anguish, Adoniram mounted a horse and rode westward out of town.
Making his way to New York City, he joined a small traveling theatrical troupe. “We lived a reckless, vagabond life,” Adoniram later confessed, “finding lodgings where we could, and bilking the landlord where we found opportunity – running up a score, and then decamping without paying the reckoning.” He soon grew tired and disillusioned with such a lifestyle and left it without notice one night.
Continuing his journey on horseback, he stopped at a country inn where the proprietor, while showing him to his room, stated apologetically: “I have been obliged to place you next door to a young man who is exceedingly ill, probably in a dying state. I hope that will occasion you no uneasiness.”
Adoniram assured him it would not, but it proved to be a very restless night. What really disturbed him was the landlord’s statement that the young stranger was in a dying state. “Is he prepared?” Adoniram kept wondering. “Is he a strong Christian, calmly anticipating glorious immortality, or an unbeliever shuddering on the brink of a dark, unknown eternity?” Entirely against his will, Adoniram could not help but imagine himself on that deathbed facing eternity.
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Selina also heard of a soldier’s wife who had just given birth to twins and was not expected to live. The countess responded quickly by helping the young woman as much as she was able—physically, materially and spiritually. The dying mother wept as she began to understand her sinful state before God and begged Selina to return to teach her from the Scriptures. Next door to the young wife’s lodgings was the public bakehouse, where the local residents would bring their dough ready kneaded to bake in the communal oven. Through a crack in the wall between the bakehouse and the soldier’s wife’s apartment, those awaiting their turn to bake their bread could hear snatches of the conversation taking place next door.

George Whitefield and John Wesley are well known as the primary human instruments used of God to spark the great evangelical revival in eighteenth century England and Wales. Far fewer Christians today are familiar with Selina Hastings (1707-1791), the English noblewoman who played a key role in supporting and promoting that same revival.
Selina was the Countess of Huntingdon, having married Theophilus Hastings, the 9th Earl of Huntingdon. Following her Christian conversion through faith in Christ at age thirty-one, she was filled with desire and determination to point others to Jesus as their Savior. Besides personally sharing the Gospel with many of her acquaintances, she supported scores of Christian evangelists in their ministry of traveling about to proclaim the message of salvation. In her lifetime she funded the construction of sixty-four Gospel-preaching chapels in England and Wales, established a college where many evangelists were trained, and supported missionary endeavors in colonial America and Sierra Leone, Africa.
To follow is an intriguing set of events that unfolded in Selina’s life when she was in her late forties and early fifties. They typify how the Lord used her significantly throughout her life to bring tremendous spiritual good to innumerable people.   
In 1756 Selina’s sixteen-year-old son named Henry became ill with an unidentified disorder that began adversely affecting his eyesight. She took him to London to obtain the best medical advice available. Despite the doctors’ efforts, Henry’s overall health continued to deteriorate, and he was gradually going blind.
In the spring of the following year, Selina brought Henry to Brighthelmstone (later called Brighton) on the southern coast of England. There it was hoped he would gain improved health through sea bathing, which in that day was thought to bring considerable benefit in the case of a number of ailments.
Shortly after arriving in Brighton, Selina was surprised when a woman she had never before met approached her in the street and exclaimed, “Oh Madam, you are come!”
Taken aback, Selina asked, “What do you know of me?”
“Madam,” the woman answered, “I saw you in a dream three years ago, dressed as you are now.” She went on to relate a dream she could never forget in which she had seen a tall woman dressed just as Selina was presently. She had understood that when that woman came to Brighthelmstone she would be the means of doing much good there.
Soon thereafter, Selina paid the woman a visit and learned that she likely had only a few months to live. The Countess shared the Gospel of salvation with her.
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Stanley summarized his high estimation of the Doctor by stating in his book How I Found Livingstone: “My friendly reader, … God grant that if ever you take to traveling in Africa, you will get as noble and true a man for your companion as David Livingstone! For four months and four days I lived with him, in the same house, or in the same boat, or in the same tent, and I never found a fault in him. I am a man of quick temper, and often without sufficient cause, I dare say, have broken ties of friendship. But with Livingstone I never had cause for resentment, but each day’s life with him added to my admiration for him.”

If a non-Christian who was somewhat skeptical toward Christians and Christianity were to have a close-up view of us going through months of adversity, what would he or she then have to say about our Christian beliefs, behavior and character?
That’s precisely what we see in Henry Stanley’s extremely positive pen portrait of David Livingstone after the two men spent four challenging months together in inner Africa. For those of us who are Christians, there is a lot for us to consider and relate to our own Christian life and witness as we contemplate Stanley’s favorable portrayal of Livingstone.
Stanley was the American newspaper journalist who delivered Livingstone from destitution and provided him with hope-reviving support near the end of the renowned missionary-explorer’s career of service in Africa. For a period of four months Stanley was Livingstone’s daily companion, living in close quarters with him, often under trying circumstances. Those difficulties included threatening encounters with suspicious tribesmen, spells of severe illness, a grueling overland journey on foot during the rainy season, and being attacked by a swarm of wild bees.
Following their time together, Stanley recorded a number of observations about Livingstone’s character, temperament and conduct. What makes the newspaperman’s testimony of Livingstone even more compelling is that Stanley himself was probably not a born-again believer at the time. By Stanley’s own admission, he had a fiery temper and was easily offended. He had an obvious wariness toward any type of Christian legalism or hypocrisy. All these factors inclined him to be reserved toward rather than receptive of a missionary doctor and his Christianity. Yet the consistency, genuineness and winsomeness of Livingstone’s Christian lifestyle could not be denied and made a strong positive impression on Stanley.
Stanley summarized his high estimation of the Doctor by stating in his book How I Found Livingstone: “My friendly reader, … God grant that if ever you take to traveling in Africa, you will get as noble and true a man for your companion as David Livingstone! For four months and four days I lived with him, in the same house, or in the same boat, or in the same tent, and I never found a fault in him. I am a man of quick temper, and often without sufficient cause, I dare say, have broken ties of friendship. But with Livingstone I never had cause for resentment, but each day’s life with him added to my admiration for him.”
Of Livingstone’s commendable characteristics, even in the face of marked adversity and sacrifice, Stanley revealed: “In Livingstone I have seen many amiable traits. His gentleness never forsakes him. His hopefulness never deserts him.”
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Beginning on the very day of Livingstone’s death, the British naval patrol was instructed to prevent the export of slaves from the eastern coastal ports. Just five weeks after his death the great slave market at Zanzibar was permanently closed. Less than two years later “all conveyance of slaves by land under any conditions” was also outlawed, dealing a final death blow to the East Africa slave trade.

David Livingstone is best known as a renowned nineteenth century missionary and explorer in Africa. Another vital aspect of his ministry career was the crucial role he played in exposing and helping bring about the abolition of the slave trade in southcentral and southeastern Africa in the latter half of the 1800s. To follow is a summation of his important part in that epic accomplishment.
Throughout his first eleven years of missionary service in Africa (1841-1852) Livingstone heard of and witnessed instances of Boers oppressing and even enslaving Africans beyond the borders of Cape Colony in southern Africa. The Boers were Dutch farm families who had emigrated by the thousands in the 1830s and 1840s, resettling north of Cape Colony in order to avoid being under British rule there. Eventually a Boer militia attacked a group of tribes to whom Livingstone had been ministering and ransacked his residence at Kolobeng, destroying his personal property valued at more than 300 British pounds (then equaling over 1,500 American dollars, likely worth at least thirty or forty times that amount today).
In 1851 Livingstone came in contact with and began ministering to the Makololo, a powerful marauding tribe that had settled in the area between the Chobe River and the upper reaches of the Zambesi River. The Makololo had subjected a number of other tribes living in that same region, which was several hundred miles further north than Livingstone had previously ministered. Those tribal groups, including the Makololo, had a long history of attacking neighboring tribes and carrying off livestock and people as slaves. In addition, Portuguese traders from Angola to the west, assisted by African Mambari tribesmen, entered that region and carried away scores or hundreds of slaves each year.
Livingstone spent two and a half years seeking to determine if a river transportation route could be established from either the west or east coast of Africa, to effectively and affordably transport missionaries and supplies to the inner area of the continent. In doing so he became the first European ever to make a transcontinental journey across Africa. As he approached and stayed for a time at both coasts, Portuguese officials were uniformly supportive of and helpful to him. But he noted that a number of those officials were themselves involved in slave trading to help supplement their income.
While back in Britain during 1857-1858, Livingstone wrote his first book, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa. In it he exposed and condemned the different types of slavery he had seen practiced by the Boers, various tribes and the Portugues. In his many well-attended speeches given throughout Britain he put forth a plan to bring Christianity and legitimate commerce to inner Africa, which would in time destroy the slave trade there. He accepted the British Government’s invitation to head the Zambesi Expedition in exploring the Zambesi and its tributaries. The expedition’s further objectives, which were clearly and repeatedly stated in official documents, correspondence and public speeches, were to promote commerce and Christianity to the tribes of that region, with the intention that doing so would help Africans in various ways—economically, spiritually and by putting a stop to the slave trade.
The Zambesi Expedition explored: the lower portion of the Zambesi; the Shire River region and Lake Nyassa (modern Lake Malawi) north and northeast of that part of the Zambesi; the Rovuma River east of Lake Nyassa. Portuguese slave traders, operating with the knowledge and approval of their regional Governors, were found to be active in the Zambesi and Shire regions while Arab slavers prosecuted their trade at Nyassa. Not a few tribes in those areas eagerly participated in the slave trade, selling into slavery people they had captured from other villages or sometimes even the undesirables of their own clans.
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She participated in and promoted a wide range of other ministries including children’s Sunday school and Bible clubs, women’s prayer and ministry groups, meeting the material needs of the underprivileged, community evangelistic meetings, and missionary endeavors. Frances was an ardent personal evangelist. She actively sought to use her varied ministry opportunities, both public and private, to point people to Christ Jesus.

We live in a day when more and more people seem increasingly skeptical toward the Christian faith. The positive personal example of Frances Havergal, an eminent nineteenth century English hymnwriter, has a lot to teach us about bearing an effective witness to such skeptics.
Frances Havergal (1836-1879) was a best-selling author of devotional literature, poetry and hymns. She was also a skilled musician who was often asked to sing solos and take a lead in choral ministries. She participated in and promoted a wide range of other ministries including children’s Sunday school and Bible clubs, women’s prayer and ministry groups, meeting the material needs of the underprivileged, community evangelistic meetings, and missionary endeavors.
Frances was an ardent personal evangelist. She actively sought to use her varied ministry opportunities, both public and private, to point people to Christ Jesus.
In April 1872 Frances visited her sister and brother-in-law, Ellen and Giles Shaw, at their country home of Winterdyne near Bewdley, England. One Sunday Frances was unwell so did not attend church with them. When the Shaws returned home from church that day, Giles was surprised to find her at the piano and exclaimed, “Why, Frances, I thought you were upstairs!”
“Yes,” she replied, “but I had my Prayer-Book, and in the psalms for today I read, ‘Tell it out among the heathen that the Lord is King’,” (citing Psalm 96:10). She continued on to explain: “I thought, what a splendid first line! And then words and music came rushing in to me.”
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Borden did more than financially support the National Bible Institute and serve on its Board of Directors. He played an active role in the NBI’s summer street preaching meetings that reached thousands. During his senior year at Princeton he taught a weeknight course on the Epistle to the Galatians in the NBI’s School for Christian Workers. Financially speaking, Borden contributed regularly and generously to the ministries he helped direct and other Christian endeavors he supported. 

William Borden (1887-1913) had a privileged upbringing in a wealthy Chicago family. As a young boy he dedicated his life to serving Christ, and at age seventeen determined to pursue a career as a Christian missionary.
In Borden’s freshman year of college at Yale University, his father died, leaving an enormous inheritance of five million dollars (worth at least twenty-five times that amount by today’s standards) to his family. When Borden turned twenty-one years of age during his senior year at Yale, he received his personal inheritance of one million dollars.
Borden’s tremendous wealth did not deflect him in the least from his whole-hearted consecration to Jesus. Instead, he remained wholly devoted to serving Christ and His Kingdom with his time, talents, energy, intellect and treasure.
After graduating from Yale, Borden attended and graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary. During his three years at Princeton, though still only in his early twenties, he served as a Trustee of the Moody Bible Institute and a Director of the National Bible Institute (an evangelistic association that actively ministered to people who had no church affiliation). He also continued to help oversee the Yale Hope Mission ministry which had been established during his college years.
Borden’s service in those responsible positions often required him to be away from Princeton for board meetings and other ministry opportunities in Chicago, New York and New Haven. Despite those demands, he continued to energetically prosecute his seminary studies with distinction, earning the high regard of fellow students and professors alike.
When Borden, at twenty-two years of age, was first approached by D. O. Shelton about the fledgling National Bible Institute ministry, he listened intently to what Shelton had to share, then said quietly: “I want to help you in the work you are doing, and will send you $100 a month for the next year.” That day Borden wrote Shelton an initial check for twice that amount and, in the seven months that followed, continued to send him a check for $200. In eight months Borden gave $1,600 to Shelton’s ministry, equaling at least $40,000 today. Shelton later wrote: “I was learning to know Will Borden, one of whose characteristics was always to do better than promised—more, and not less, than he led you to expect.”

Borden did more than financially support the National Bible Institute and serve on its Board of Directors. He played an active role in the NBI’s summer street preaching meetings that reached thousands.

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In addition to financially supporting the founding of the Yale Hope Mission…Borden was actively involved in the carrying out of its ministry. He regularly took part in helping to conduct the Gospel services that were held at the mission. A foreign visitor at Yale said that what had impressed him the most during his time in New Haven was seeing “William, this wealthy undergraduate, with his arm around a ‘down-and-outer,’ kneeling with him as he sought forgiveness and prayed the prayer of the publican: ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner’.”

William Borden’s example during his years as a student at Yale University (1905-1909) serves as a reminder that a young person whose life is fully dedicated to Christ Jesus can have a tremendous spiritual impact on others. May many consecrated Christian teens and young adults be encouraged in their own spiritual life and service by Borden’s outstanding example.
Borden’s years at Yale were active and well-rounded. As a sports enthusiast, he participated in football, baseball, wrestling, crew (rowing), and track. He excelled academically and as a senior was elected as president of Yale’s Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society. As an elected Class Deacon he was responsible for helping to encourage the spiritual wellbeing and service opportunities of his fellow classmen. His final year at Yale he was also a member of the Senior [Student Government] Council and served on the committee that produced the Class Book of the graduating class.
Borden was seventeen years old when he entered Yale as a freshman. One of his classmates wrote of him: “I first met Bill Borden in the fall of 1905, at the beginning of my freshman year in Yale. What struck me then and during my entire acquaintance with him, was the amazing maturity of his character. Though almost a year older than he was, I felt that in character, self-control, and measure of purpose, he was many years my senior. In many ways, I should say, he was the most mature man of his class.
I do not mean to imply that he was ‘oldmannish’ in the least. He had a keen sense of humor, could let out a most uproarious war whoop of a laugh, and was a famous ‘rough-houser’.
Another classmate of Borden’s testified of him: “He served on the committee in charge of the religious work of our class, and soon stamped himself as a leader in the Christian activities of the college. In spite of his younger age, he was far more mature in faith than many considerably older. His grasp of the essentials of faith was, even at this time, firm and assured.
“He had already decided to become a foreign missionary. A fixed purpose of this sort gives a man a great singleness of aim that steadies not only himself, but those he meets; and Bill’s character had a solidity about it, directly traceable to his surrender to Christ for a life of service. Interested as he was in football and many other activities, Bill let it be known that his heart was first in the service of the Savior, ever watching for opportunities for spreading the faith he believed so firmly himself.”
Shortly after arriving at Yale, Borden became involved with the university’s chapter of the Young Men’s Christian Association. At that time Yale’s YMCA enjoyed great importance and effectiveness on campus, promoting a high standard of scholarship and Christian endeavor. Often hundreds gathered for its Sunday evening services.
But many students did not attend the YMCA meetings, and Borden became burdened to reach them as well. As the first school term progressed, he and a likeminded friend began meeting each morning for prayer before going to breakfast. Soon two other students joined them.
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Elisabeth reached a number of solid conclusions about such incomprehensible developments: (1) Sometimes God’s sovereign will is inscrutable and defies easy explanation. Our “why?” questions may not be satisfactorily answered for a very long time, or perhaps not ever in this life, although they doubtless will be in eternity. (2) Such situations provide Christians with the opportunity to continue trusting and obeying God even in the face of incomprehensible, painful developments and stubbornly-persistent questions about them. 

Sometimes God’s sovereign will seems inscrutable, especially when it involves His allowing overwhelming trial or crushing disappointment. Or when He permits the thwarting of what consecrated Christians had become thoroughly convinced was in keeping with His plan and would bring great glory to Him.
Elisabeth Elliot (1926-2015), a prominent American missionary, writer and speaker, as well as one of the most influential Christian women in the second half of the twentieth century, experienced God’s imponderable sovereign will more than once in her life and ministry. To follow is an account of an early occasion when that happened to her. It has some important lessons to teach us about responding properly to God’s will in the midst of our own distressing, perplexing circumstances of life.
In 1952 Elisabeth went to Ecuador as a single missionary. There she joined three other single lady missionaries in seeking to minister to the Colorado Indians from a ministry base in San Miguel. The Colorado Indians lived nearby in the jungles of Ecuador’s western rainforest.

Elisabeth, a trained linguist, had as her primary objective there to render the Colorado language into written form. She needed to hire a Colorado Indian language “informant” who could patiently work with her in learning the vocabulary and phonetics of their native tongue. But none of the Indians she met had any interest in doing so. They were proud, independent and a bit disdainful of the white women’s presence in their world.

Elisabeth, however, was confident that God would answer her prayers and grant her success in learning the Colorado language, harnessing it into an alphabet, and teaching the Indians to read and write in their own tongue. They would then be able to read the Bible for themselves, thus facilitating their coming to saving faith in Christ and their subsequent Christian growth and service. Great glory would be brought to God.

The Lord provided an even better informant than Elisabeth could have imagined in an Ecuadorian named Don Macario. He had grown up on a hacienda with Colorado children, and was completely bilingual in Spanish and Colorado. He was a Christian and was willing to work with Betty for what she could afford to pay him.

The Colorado Indians called their own language Tsahfihki, “the language of the people.” Macario taught Elisabeth Tsahfihki vocabulary, vowel pronunciations, inflections, parts of speech and sentence structure. She created detailed notecards and charts as well as orthography (spelling) lists, using phonetic symbols that represented Tsahfihki sounds. For several months the language work progressed well.

Then suddenly, tragically Don Macario was murdered! He had been clearing brush on a piece of property when a group of men showed up, claiming the land belonged to one of them. When Macario insisted the property was his, one of the men pulled out a gun and shot him in the head several times at point-blank range.

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Muller’s example reminds us of some important principles with regard to seeking and following God’s guidance: (1) Bathe our endeavors and decisions in much prayer; (2) Make sure our motives are right—to bring glory to God and benefit to others, not to gain attention or honor for ourselves; (3) Look for confirmation of our plans through the positive outworking of circumstances and the affirming support of other people; (4) Lay hold of and exercise scriptural principles that can strengthen us in our endeavors; (5) We shouldn’t be too surprised if we sometimes have doubts and need additional encouragement from the Lord; (6) Don’t forget to ask God to bless us in all the specific ways that are needed, including basic blessings that we might tend to take for granted; (7) Be sure, as Muller did, to recount God’s many blessings and to heartily praise Him for them.

Recently while seeking God’s direction about quite a significant ministry decision in my own life, I was encouraged by going back and reviewing some of the specific details of how the Lord led George Muller into his great orphan ministry. Perhaps the rehearsal of those wonderful developments in Muller’s life will help provide you with some encouragement and guidance for those times when you find yourself seeking God’s direction about ministry-related matters or other important decisions in life.
Muller moved to Bristol, England, in 1832 at age twenty-six. There he co-pastored two congregations with his good friend and fellow minister Henry Craik. As part of his ministry, Muller taught Bible classes for destitute children and older people. He became greatly concerned for the spiritual and material needs of the many orphans he saw on the streets of Bristol. At that time in the whole of England there were only a dozen small orphanages—eight of those in London and none nearby Bristol.
Muller was acquainted with the work of German Professor A. H. Franke who over a century earlier had established large orphan houses in Germany. On November 20, 1835, Muller came across a biography on Franke. That evening and in the days to follow Muller wrote in his personal journal:
“I have frequently, for a long time, thought of laboring in a similar way, though it might be on a much smaller scale; not to imitate Franke, but in reliance upon the Lord. May God make it plain! November 21: Today I have had it very much impressed on my heart, no longer merely to think about the establishment of an orphan house, but actually to set about it, and I have been very much in prayer respecting it, in order to ascertain the Lord’s mind. November 23 [after receiving even more financial support for his ministries than he had requested in prayer]: This has been a great encouragement to me, and has still more stirred me up to think and pray about the establishment of an orphan house. November 25: I have been again much in prayer yesterday and today about the orphan house, and am more and more convinced that it is of God. May He in mercy guide me!”
In the days to follow Muller continued to spend many hours praying about the possible orphan ministry. He also repeatedly examined his own motives to make sure he was not thinking of pursuing this course out of a desire to gain glory for himself. Muller had a sincere desire to minister to the material and spiritual needs of orphans, and to help them grow up to become positive assets to society. But above all, as he would later write: “The first and primary object of the work was that God might be magnified by the fact that the orphans under my care are provided with all they need, only by prayer and faith, without anyone being asked by me or my fellow laborers, whereby it may be seen that God is FAITHFUL STILL and HEARS PRAYER STILL.”
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